When the world changes you.
You moved countries, became a parent, or woke up inside a life where you are doing everything right and no longer recognise yourself. From the outside you look adapted. On the inside you are running out of words for what it cost to get here.
That is what I write about. I am Jessica Gabrielzyk, a Brazilian writer living in Switzerland, and this page will point you to the right place to begin.
Pick the one that sounds most like you right now
You moved abroad and the basics suddenly feel hard.
Healthcare, paperwork, finding help, and what nobody warned me about when I had a baby in Portugal.
Maternity Abroad
You are doing everything right and no longer recognise yourself.
A book about parenting through the loss of the person you used to be. The first forty pages are free.
Parenting Unpacked
You have been called “one of the good immigrants” and it did not feel like a compliment.
A look at respectability politics: why that phrase sorts people into good and bad, and what it costs to keep earning it.
You Are One of the Good Ones. But What Does That Make Everyone Else?
Someone told you to aim lower because of your accent or your passport.
A manager told me to keep making coffee because people in Australia did not like immigrants. This is what happened when I applied for the marketing job anyway.
He Told Me to Stay and Keep Making Coffee. I Am Glad I Did Not Listen.
You heard something repeated so often that it sounded true, and you want to know if it is.
What the research says about the belief that women’s clothing explains assault, and how an inherited belief ends up feeling like common sense.
This Got Under My Skin
You have felt like the minority in a room where nobody said so.
Why minority status is not a fixed label but something that happens in a room, depending on who sets the rules.
Huh? I Am a Minority?
You like fiction that comes with research.
A dystopian novel I am writing in public about a woman whose identity is decided by the state before she can speak for herself.
Follow Marked
Who is writing this
I left São Paulo after high-school and spent almost ten years in Brisbane, then lived in Portugal, Ireland, Portugal again, and now Switzerland. My daughter was born in Portugal and arrived in Switzerland at three months old, with strong opinions about the whole thing even then. My husband is my biggest supporter and therefore not my most objective reader.
I am a member of SIETAR, the Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research. I write the books I needed and could not find, and when I am not writing I am walking forty minutes uphill with a stroller, telling myself the exercise is the point.
The Books
Maternity Abroad: Becoming a Mother in a Foreign Land.
I paid close to ten thousand euros for my daughter’s birth in Portugal because nobody warned me how the system worked. I wrote this so the next mother would not find out the expensive way. It covers healthcare, finding help, and where to get a decent coffee, and it has reached readers in more than fifteen countries. Read the first forty pages free or see the book page.
Parenting Unpacked: Parenting Through the Loss of Self.
I stopped recognising myself in the middle of doing everything right, and I could not find a book that named what was happening. This one is for the parent who is inside that moment now. It is endorsed by Ruth E. Van Reken, co-author of Third Culture Kids, and it reached number one in its Amazon Brasil category. Read the first forty pages free or see the book page.
My First American Coloring Book.
My daughter was going to grow up between cultures and needed a picture of a world she had not entered yet. It has 101 illustrations of everyday American life for children from age two, and it is screen-free. See the book.
Marked.
A dystopian novel about a woman whose identity is decided by the state before she can speak for herself. I am building it in public, so the research is on the blog and the chapters follow. Follow the research.
The words I keep using
Three ideas run through everything here. The inherited scorecard is the unwritten list of what a good life, a good parent, and a good immigrant look like, handed down by people who never had to meet it themselves. Identity migration is what happens to who you are when your life changes faster than you can catch up. The loss of felt competence is the strange experience of being good at things and no longer feeling it. The Intercultural Glossary explains each one in plain language.
Start anywhere. I will be here.
Jessica Gabrielzyk